


More Alike Than Not

by Merfilly



Category: DC Elseworlds, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 23:17:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stephanie Brown, one of Gotham's senior heroes, gets to reach out to a Titan not that unlike herself</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Alike Than Not

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amathela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amathela/gifts).



> Inspired by [_JLA: Created Equal_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JLA:_Created_Equal), an Elseworlds publication.

Stephanie stayed carefully in the shadows of the building she was on, peering across the alley into the window on the opposite one. It was late, far later than she'd meant to come by here, but the occupant of that room was not asleep. The mischievous little girl with bright hair was playing in the dark room, all of her dolls around her for some kind of make-believe party. It made Stephanie smile to see that her daughter was just as rebellious as Stephanie had been about bedtimes.

"Happy birthday, sweetie," she whispered on the wind before moving on. Today was the real birthday, not the one her foster family chose to celebrate. That suited Stephanie too; her daughter was growing up strong, raised by her foster mother and a network of cousins and aunts. This part of town had been fairly safe once the plague had run its course, and Stephanie had not had any trouble finding just where her daughter was by using…

...Tim's files. Her chest tightened on that memory; she'd been maintaining her part of the city by using all the files she had taken from Tim's back-up safe house. Cass had some of the files too, and once they matched them to the ones Huntress had inherited from Oracle, the three women had a good idea of how to manage the city. Of course, with Catwoman out of action, Poison Ivy lost in madness, and Harley Quinn far from Gotham, Stephanie had to admit it was really quiet most nights. And they had extra help in the form of Onyx, Batwoman, Question, and Sasha. Between all of them, they made sure supplies went where they were needed, crime stayed low, and no one was alone long enough to go crazy.

She fired off a line, going high enough to look back to where Arkham Asylum had once stood. She still felt a grim sense of justification in having helped detonate the explosives there. Never again would that building's malign influence shape a person who needed help into something to be feared. That was one thing Huntress had led them in, by Catwoman's last request before leaving. 

With any luck, destroying that place had lifted the curse on Gotham, and her daughters would live more safely.

That thought stood her in good stead as Stephanie fired off a new line to go meet the Titan that was supposed to need access to one of Nightwing's old places. She still wasn't sure about letting this happen, but Huntress had okayed the deal. The only reason Stephanie was involved at all was because the apartment fell in her territory.

Well, it couldn't take that long, and then she'd be able to go back to her own place, check on Mom, and get some sleep for the day.

* * *

Rose Worth //never a Wilson, he turned his back on me!// adjusted her mask as she studied the encrypted note in her hand one more time. She was certain she had broken the cypher, but couldn't understand why the note said to go to Gotham. Yes, Troia had insisted that Nightwing and Rose's sperm-donor had been tight with each other. But it still didn't make a lot of sense that the answers they were looking for would be in this stinking harbor-rat infested city.

 _I don't know that address, Rose, but D… Nightwing didn't tell me everything,_ Troia had said.

Rose sighed; why couldn't Deathstroke the Terminator have just trusted someone, anyone, to hold this damned secret for him? 

//Probably for the same reason he just threw me into the TItans' lives and walked out; never even thought I'd develop side effects from being his kid!//

She hated not even being sure he was dead. There had not been a body, not anywhere that Troia had known to look. They'd found Wintergreen's body in Africa, and Rose had seen to his burial with Mirage, Troia, and Terra to help her. But of her genetic father, there'd been nothing. With all the men in the world dead, it seemed likely that the bastich had just been away from home when it hit, but his healing factor also left the possibility open that he'd survived and was in hiding somewhere.

The moment of warning from her precognitive ability triggered her enhanced senses, and Rose was looking in the correct direction as the purple-clad hero landed next to her. The other woman was a little heavier than Rose, more curvy, but still toned under that armor, if Rose was reading everything correctly. Given that she was the Titans' intel analyst these days, she was pretty certain she was.

"Arsenal?" the purple-clad hero questioned, to verify she had found the correct costumed person to guide.

Rose nodded. There really hadn't been any question as to what name she'd choose. She hadn't known her brothers, hadn't cared for her dad, but Roy had tried to reach out. Taking up his name, with her own skill and ability to hit anything she chose to, had seemed right.

"Spoiler," she greeted, trying to keep the politely listening pose her mother had instilled in her for learning information.

"You need access to Nightwing's apartment here in Gotham. Huntress is vouching for you being here, but I don't know you," Spoiler said bluntly. "I'm not happy at the idea of a stranger in one of their havens."

Rose found that blunt honesty refreshing. Troia could be so damn tactful as to be weak-spined in dealing with facts sometimes. Mirage, well, she tip-toed around Troia to not offend her. And Terra just had days where the whole world didn't make sense in her head, so she tried to keep out of it all. Few Titans' women that had migrated in and out of the team knew how to be that blunt.

"I'm actually looking for any notes my … father," she managed to say, rather than any of the rest of the epithets for him, "might have left in Nightwing's care. A clue at Nightwing's New York apartment seems to say it is here. And I need those notes." She'd been growing stronger, had actually hurt Troia in a sparring match a few weeks ago. That had led to this search, ransacking all of the Titans' databases for clues about her father's genetic make-up, and the program that had created him.

"Your dad, huh? Alright, I get family, and complications," Spoiler said. "Three buildings forward, turn left, jump one building, next one, slightly shorter, is our destination. Meet you on the roof."

//Yes, sure, complications… you don't know the half of it, Eggplant Girl.//

* * *

Stephanie waited until Arsenal had caught up… and that had taken about the amount of time she expected from Sasha, who was not quite human. One more point of mystery on this Titan, then, Stephanie decided. She wished she'd asked the Canary who had taken over the archer's costume and name before the older woman had left for the West Coast to raise the first Arsenal's kid.

With Arsenal behind her, Stephanie keyed off the obvious alarm, killed the secondary one, and then unlocked the apartment to let them both in it.

"We went through everything a couple of times both before and after Oracle died, to be sure we had all the information about Gotham's power structure we needed, but there were things that were clearly Titan-related that we mostly left alone. Always expected Troia or Bumblebee to come claim it," she told her guest. She pointed toward the file cabinets that had been added, walking that way. She disarmed the failsafe on the one that held the Titans' information, then unlocked it for Arsenal.

"Should definitely be in his Titans' files," Arsenal told her, moving over there to start exploring the files. 

"Huntress said you can have the apartment to use as long as you need," Stephanie said, letting her disapproval of letting a stranger in town have that much access show in her voice.

"Shouldn't take me more than the day to go through this stuff," Arsenal answered that, ignoring the files on anything clearly marked as other than 'Deathstroke' or 'Ravager' or other names related to her brothers' mother. "Brought my own rations too. So feel free to bail. I hear Gotham still keeps nocturnal hours."

"I'll be in the other room," Stephanie answered that. Like hell she was just going to leave a stranger in Nightwing's place.

"Suit yourself."

* * *

Nothing.

Oh sure, Rose had found every Titan's case file where they'd crossed paths with the son of a bitch that had fathered her, but there wasn't a damn thing in those to help Rose _now_. Had the Titans never been curious what made Slade Wilson into Deathstroke the Terminator? Had Nightwing _really_ just accepted Adeline Kane's word on all of that?

Damn it.

The creak of metal drew Rose out of her internal loathing to see she'd dented the file cabinet just by holding on to it.

"Son of a …"

"Arsenal?" The sleep-roughened voice of the other hero helped Rose pull it all back into check, though her temper was raw.

"Nothing here." She turned to look at Spoiler, eyes sweeping over the apartment until they met the lenses in that faceless mask. "False alarm, guess I get to get out of your…"

Rose turned her attention abruptly back to the sofa table just beside the hallway door. "Wait. Nightwing was in the Tower when the infection began. And Troia did not allow them to leave… so why is there a phone laying on that table?"

Spoiler turned and looked down at it. "Not sure. Could just be a spare, but it's not the model they usually used as a burn phone."

The hero in purple got out a small spectrograph instrument, and did a quick investigation of the table, the phone, and the charger near it. "The prints are not Nightwing's," she concluded. "What prints are there… they're on the phone and charger, but not the table."

Rose came over and looked at the prints on the screen from beside Spoiler's shoulder. Her jaw tightened as her recall identified the particular whorl pattern in the thumb; it was on her amended birth certificate too, proof that Wintergreen had made the man acknowledge and provide for her.

"It's my father's," Rose said just as it coughed up an I.D. to Spoiler.

"And I thought my dad was difficult enough to deal with," Spoiler said as she saw the name flash on the small screen.

Rose looked at the woman in purple. "I thought all the psychotics' kids were Titans?"

"Dad may not have counted; he was a two-bit hood," Spoiler answered breezily, putting her tool away. "Look, you chased a lead here. That's not Nightwing's. I'm not going to stop you from picking it up… but I am going to say this: sometimes dads do really screwy things. So be careful."

The Titan considered just blowing it off, but… Spoiler had that tone, the one that said she knew. So Rose grunted an assent, and picked up both the phone and the charger, going to find a plug to get juice going to the device. Something was on that phone, something she needed… and maybe it would answer her concerns about the changes she was facing.

Maybe it would even answer why the bastich had walked away from her… but that would be dreaming, wouldn't it?

* * *

Stephanie flipped her phone out to text Huntress as Arsenal settled in with the phone in the kitchen, a notepad at her side. 

{Did you know who she was, like with her dad and all?} 

After a minute, her phone buzzed back. {It's why I left you on helping her. Troia said she was looking for answers about him.}

Stephanie counted to ten. {You're turning into him, you know. We're going to make the redhead give up the pointy ears if you keep this up.}

Huntress didn't reply, but Stephanie wasn't surprised. Sometimes Huntress was such a school teacher, trying to impart life lessons without spelling them out for the student. She put her phone away and waited; Cass had her patrol tonight, until Arsenal left.

Depending on how she reacted to that phone's contents, Stephanie was starting to think that might take a while… if the Titan was willing to talk it out with someone not on her team.

* * *

Rose felt numb. 

_I knew you'd find this eventually. Safest place to leave it, Rose. The Bat trained everyone here, and he's got a pathological tendency toward museum showpieces._

That was definitely everything the case files had implied about her father. Cold, manipulative bastich.

_Your mother wanted me out of your life. When she was gone… I had to think she was right, that I'd just get you killed if I ever showed that I wanted you near._

//So you left me with a handful of strangers?!//

_There is no research left about the serum. Wintergreen worries this will blow up in your face. All I can say… read his journals. I left the electronic copy on a disk in the Kid's room at the Tower. It's tucked inside the 'Great Frog' cd case._

Rose sighed at that part; what answers she could get had been right where she started.

_Rose… you are your mother's daughter. That alone means you are strong, smart, and able to excel. But you are mine too… and I have no doubt I would be as proud of that as I ever was of my sons._

That was the final video message on the phone, leaving Rose very unsettled. How was she supposed to handle the idea that her dad had … only been trying to protect her? She'd been so lost and confused and hurting, dealing with Troia who wanted to play mom, dealing with Roy who wanted to do right by her but didn't know how, and only having those phone calls from Wintergreen to reassure her that she was still connected to someone in the world that had known her mom.

She carefully pocketed the phone and its charger; she'd get the Tower AI to make a backup of it when she got home, just in case she'd missed anything. The messages certainly implied that her dad was gone… he'd looked ghastly in the last of the messages. 

She stood, gathering up her notepad too, and walked back into the main room. The Gotham hero was still there, and Rose almost let her temper make her be spiteful, just to have something, someone to lash out at. Her eyes flicked over the file cabinet, though, with the finger marks pressed into it now, and she curbed the need.

"Got what I need," she said, aware that her voice was hoarse with all of her frustration.

"Okay." Spoiler stood from the couch, and started locking things down. "You going to be alright, Arsenal?"

"Not much choice, is there?" Rose asked bitterly.

Spoiler just nodded a little at that, over her shoulder. "I don't know your situation, but I do know that complicated dads make for complicated fallout."

Rose bit back her first words, listened to all of that, and breathed out very slowly. "Yeah, they do," she agreed. The Titans had their share of issues surrounding family on the wrong side of things, but none of the girls left knew it first hand like this. Maybe if Raven ever came back, Rose would have someone who got it, but maybe not.

"Hey… you ever need to vent because something he did blows up for you, just give me a call, okay?" Spoiler offered in a rush. "Me and Batgirl both get it. Even Huntress, not that I recommend her for therapy time. She's a little old-fashioned." Spoiler made the pointy symbols over her own head, and Rose had to laugh at the mimicry of Batman's legacy.

"I just might," Rose told her. She didn't have anyone left, and even her mother would admit it was time to start building new alliances.

"Okay. Let's get you back to your flier then, so you can go beat up someone and get it out of your system," Spoiler said cheerfully, and Rose just nodded.

Maybe Eggplant-Girl really did get it.

**Author's Note:**

> Though it is inspired by Created Equal, I played fast and loose with when/where the Plague erupted in canon. The Plague happened between Arsenal's time as leader and The Titans, while in Gotham Sasha had not yet left the city.


End file.
